Cutlass Trilogy

Thursday, November 21, 2013

Alexia must choose safety and an arranged marriage, or true love and being hunted by the Soulless every moonless night. In the English society of 1768 where women are bred to marry, unattractive Alexia, just sixteen, believes she will end up alone. But on the county doorstep of a neighbor’s estate, she meets a man straight out of her nightmares, one whose blue eyes threaten to consume her whole world—especially later when she discovers him standing over her murdered host in the middle of the night. Among the many things to change for her that evening are: her physical appearance—from ghastly to breathtaking, an epidemic of night terrors predicting the future, and the blue-eyed man’s unexpected infusion into her life. Not only do his appearances precede tragedies, but they’re echoed by the arrival of ravenous, black-robed wraiths on moonless nights. Unable to decide whether he is one of these monsters or protecting her from them, she uncovers what her father has been concealing: truths about her own identity, about the blue-eyed man, and about love. After an attack close to home, Alexia realizes she cannot keep one foot in her old life and one in this new world. To protect her family she must either be sold into a loveless marriage, or escape with the man of her dreams and risk becoming one of the Soulless.

Unravel the mystery of the Moonless night! Hidden in each of the 8 blog tour excerpts is asingle word. Gather all 8 and figure out the sentence to win a free copy of Moonless. Send your mystery sentence to crystal (AT) crystal-collier.com with the subjectMYSTERY SENTENCE before December 10, 2013, and you will be entered to win one of 10 copies of MOONLESS—just in time for Christmas. Happy hunting!

Kiren extended a hand to help her up, and she took it. Her feet were instantly below her—so quickly that she stumbled and landed against his solid form. An arm rounded her back tenderly, her legs threatening to give at the elation of his touch.

He turned in the direction of the house, pulling her forward with him, moving out of the garden and up to solid brick walls. They halted at a window,the study window. Father sat within, gazing at the portrait of Dana, fingers tracing the details.

“He gave her up.” Her attention snapped back to her breathtaking captor, inhaling his oaken tang. “He could have kept her for his own, and he gave her up.”

His eyes met hers. The azure depths broke in a myriad of lighter flecks, like stars reflected in an ocean tide. They consumed her, igniting a fire within her breast—an irrational hunger for the tremor in his arm against her back, the heat of his side against hers, the feel of his hand vacillating ever so slightly . . .

Crystal, author of MOONLESS, is a former composer/writer for Black Diamond Productions. She can be found practicing her brother-induced ninja skills while teaching children or madly typing about fantastic and impossible creatures. She has lived from coast to coast and now calls Florida home with her creative husband, three littles, and “friend” (a.k.a. the zombie locked in her closet). Secretly, she dreams of world domination and a bottomless supply of cheese. You can find her on her blog and Facebook, or follow her on Twitter.

Praise for MOONLESS:

Bethany Kaczmarek, editor at A Little Red, Inc: "MOONLESS is powerful, compelling, and packed with soul. MOONLESS is wonderful. So many threads, such rich backstory. Such amazing world-building. It was familiar England, yet always hinting at a sense of Otherness. Made me wonder if those things had really been there all along and I missed them." Sharon Johnston, author of SLEEPER: "Collier transports us to a time of elegance and mixes in supernatural splendor that gives goosebumps."

Tammy Mckee: "I fell head over heels for the characters. The story itself was magnificent and the way Crystal writes is beyond that. I truly enjoyed every minute."

Rachel Hert, editor at Fantasy Editing: "Moonless does a fantastic job building a complex world filled with a cast of characters that are individuals and stay in your memory. I highly recommend reading!"

Monday, November 18, 2013

This last week has been filled with much anxiety as I woke up every morning and went to bed every evening expecting a call from my best friend informing me that her mother had finally lost her 5 year battle with cancer.

I got that call Saturday morning around 9:45.

Rosemary is one of the bravest people I've ever met, and I didn't even know her for most of her fight against ovarian cancer. The stories Emily shared with me were inspirational. Rosemary was a fighter. She didn't let anything stand in her way. This woman was diagnosed five years ago with stage four terminal ovarian cancer. When the cancer spread to her brain, she continued to fight. She continued to work at the Oklahoma Blood Institute up until the day of her stroke, and lived nearly a year and a half after. She was beloved by so many.

She raised three girls who are a tribute to her.

Emily and Rosemary

Beautiful Rosemary

The Heels for Hope Foundation was created in honor of Rosemary Persa. Every September, people don their heels and race for a cure for ovarian cancer. If you would like, head over and check out the Heels for Hope website, give them some love on their Facebook page, or even donate.

We love you Rosemary! You are a brilliant light, a beautiful soul. I didn't know you very long, but you changed my life and gave me one of the best friends I could have ever had. Your family is such a beautiful gift to me and I can't thank you enough for them.

Write about a local food bank or organization that helps feed the poor in your area. Share as much detail as you can to help promote their cause.

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Show the blogfest badge (generously created and donated by our favorite digital artist, the amazing Jeremy of jmhdigital) and link back to this informational post at either of our sites. (If you need help doing this, just email me and I'll walk you through it.)

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Monday, November 11, 2013

Today is Aldrea's cover reveal for THE ROGUE KING! The genre is Science Fantasy, and the release date is February 22, 2014!

*drumroll*

Ta-da!!

Blurb:

Outside is dangerous.

Such is the warning Koral has heard for twelve years. Born a product of genetic manipulation, he knows little else of the world beyond the steel walls of his home.

When fate gives him the choice between certain death and the unknown, there's no question in what he must choose. But he's about to find out the sands he must brave are full of more than mere monsters.

Providing the desert doesn't kill him first.

This is a world ruled by instinct, where innocence is drowned in blood. Here, men are offered up to the great Serpent God, Lorric, only to emerge as the most feared killers on the planet: The Rogues.

With the god's sights set on turning Koral into a legend, he must sacrifice himself to survive and be reborn as... The Rogue King.

Author Bio:

Born and raised in New Zealand, Aldrea Alien lives on a small farm with her family, including a menagerie of animals. Since discovering a love of writing at the age of twelve, she hasn't found an ounce of peace from the characters plaguing her mind.

Friday, November 8, 2013

I like to end the week with celebration, that's why I joined Viklit's weekly bloghop of awesomeness where we.....

(hehe...that worked out well!)

What I'm celebrating this week:

1. I got Cutlass on GoodReads!
It's SO cool and weird to see your profile say "author of cutlass." I probably added it early as it doesn't have it's description yet, or it's cover...but it will soon. If you'd like to add it to your bookshelf, go HERE. And, if you want to become my friend, please add me! :) I love friends.

2. Rachel helped me with my blurb. What we have right now is this:

Notorious pirate Barren Reed has one thing on his mind: Revenge against the man who killed his father. So kidnapping his enemy's fiancé seems a perfect plan…until he actually does it.

Larkin Lee is more than a pretty face and fiancé to a powerful man. Her fierce personality is enough to make any pirate want to push her overboard.

But when the King of the Orient comes to Barren with a task—to find the Bloodstone, a powerful gem thought only to exist in legend, Barren sees another opportunity to destroy his enemy. Together, Barren, Larkin and a crew of pirates set off to find the stone, only to discover it caused the death of Barren’s own mother and Larkin’s, too. As his strongest allies turn into his greatest enemies, and the life of the girl he kidnapped becomes more important than he ever dreamed, Barren’s quest for revenge becomes a fight to save the Orient.
If that sounds totally awesome to you, let me know. LOL. Also, if something doesn't sound quite right, also let me know. :D

3. I'm very much celebrating my wonderful Aladdin.

For those of you who don't know, Aladdin is my boyfriend. I call him Aladdin because he looks like Aladdin (that's not his real name, lol). He's also taken advantage of this because he told me the other day, "I'm Aladdin, you have to trust me." LOLOLOL.

Anyways, this sweet boy has helped me with EVERYTHING. I mean, I decide to self-pub, and he's all about watching photoshop videos to help me create a map, and reading up on all the formatting info, and just anything and everything to help me make this as perfect as possible.

Oh, if you want to see my first blogpost about how my Aladdin looks like THE Aladdin, go HERE. LOL.

Thursday, November 7, 2013

This is late because I had internet problems yesterday! Silly Internet. Anyways, the wonderful Mina Lobo at Some Dark Romantic is hosting the Resurrection Blogfest for her blog-o-versary! Happy Bloggiversary, Mina! The rules are simple: resurrect a post from between November 8, 2012 and November 6, 2013.

Because I posted yesterday for the IWSG about being positive, I decided to resurrect a post from June 28, 2013 titled "Healthy thoughts."

A HUGE part of getting healthy, is making sure your thoughts are positive. It sounds easy, right? I bet many people don't realize how negative they really are. How many people use the term "F my life" or "I just can't" or "I'm not doing enough" or "I'm terrible at this."

What about..."I hate the way I look in this dress""I don't like my [insert body part here]""I shouldn't have eaten that brownie for lunch"

Even saying "I want to be a writer" when someone asks you what you want to do with your English Degree isn't thinking positively. If I said "I'm a writer," now that would be positive.Healthy, positive thoughts are so important to us as writers. We swim in a world of rejection a lot. I even had a dream about sending a query off and being rejected in like two seconds. It's hard and it will be harder if we let it bring us down.

Now, I didn't just magically decide one day that I needed healthy thoughts, or that my thoughts were unhealthy. This has been a learning process and don't think for a second that all I have are perfect thoughts because...man, it's hard to change how you think. Once you begin though, you'll start becoming hyper-aware of where negativity comes from and it will make you feel icky. Then you'll realize where you picked those thoughts up from (maybe your mother or your father? Teachers or other influential characters in your life). You'll start to tell those negative thoughts "no!" and feel better for it.

Changing our thoughts allows us to attract positive things in life because we're finally not focusing on the bad. It's a good exercise for anyone.

Start by turning one negative thing you say about yourself into a positive one. What would you change?

Wednesday, November 6, 2013

I started out writing about how bi-polar I had felt over the last couple of weeks toward my book. Then I decided. "Meh. I don't feel like complaining."

Has anyone attempted that 21-day experiment where you don't complain about anything? Here's the website: http://www.acomplaintfreeworld.org

Part of their mission is "We see a day when people focus on and speak about what they desire things to be rather than complaining about how things are."

I know some people will automatically respond, "Well, that sounds nice, but try actually living in this world and then tell me you have no complaints."

But that's already approaching the idea negatively, and think if you approach something as positive as not complaining for 21 days how you're approaching everything else in your life.

Sometimes, the writing world only has only negativity. We've all heard it--how hard it is to write, how all our first drafts are crap, how hard it is to land an agent, how difficult it is to find a publisher, people actually write blog posts that tell you, "It could happen...but probably not to you."

Come on.

It's okay for people to have dreams, and you know what? A little naivety was never a bad thing. In fact, I don't understand everyone wanting to throw harsh reality in everyone's face.

Is it so you won't get hurt? Have too high expectations?

What's wrong with high expectations? Or dreams?

You might think I'm being silly--but why can't we look at that first draft as something that's not crap? Have you even thought about where you got that idea from? Did you read a lot of things about writers who talk about how all first drafts are crap, and then you started talking about yourself that way? I guarantee you that when I wrote my first book a lonnngggg time ago, I thought it was awesome...and there was a beauty to that thinking because now my self-esteem has taken blow after blow because of the "harsh realities of the publishing industry."

Let's start doing something different.
Let's look at our drafts as awesome ideas.
EVEN if it is far from perfect.
Because what you've written--well, that's certainly a feat! Why shouldn't it be praised instead of stomped on and insulted? I think, if manuscripts had feelings, they would cry and not have very high self-esteems because of what WE say about our own creations.

Look, all I'm saying is without that glorious first draft, you wouldn't have that published book. BE PROUD OF IT. Give it the praise it needs. Look at it constructively and keep on making that first draft more awesome as draft after draft follows it.

Let's change the mind-set--that's the challenge to all of you!

Note...I hope this was uplifting, and makes some of you feel better today. :)

Monday, November 4, 2013

UGH. LAST WEEK WAS INSANE!! I had media products, papers, policies, and gosh knows what else to write for school...but all that came at once, and it is OVER.

Moving on to more AWESOME THINGS!

http://www.flickr.com/

Anyone wanna help with the Cutlass Cover Reveal? It will be December 18, 2013! Just sign up on the link list and I'll get information to you ASAP! We'll probably have a contest and whatever else I can think of. :D

**If you do not see the linky list below, please just post with your e-mail.